Spot the difference - Damien Hirst's new vision
His art is celebrated and derided in equal measure. But Damien Hirst is in no doubt about his talent - and for good reason.
"If I put it in a skip outside a pub, would someone take it home? And you think, 'yeah, they would.' If it's good, it won't get left in the street.
"I think that's a good way of working out if a painting's good or not."
Now he is taking over the spectacular gilded state rooms of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, to show a series of paintings which have never been seen in public before.
Hirst has removed 45 Old Master paintings by artists including Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds from the walls of the Palladian mansion and replaced them with what he has called his "Colour Space" paintings.
They are a new body of work based on the Spot Paintings which made his name in the 1980s - and are among his most recognised works.
"If I put it in a skip outside a pub, would someone take it home? And you think, 'yeah, they would.' If it's good, it won't get left in the street.
"I think that's a good way of working out if a painting's good or not."
Now he is taking over the spectacular gilded state rooms of Houghton Hall in Norfolk, to show a series of paintings which have never been seen in public before.
Hirst has removed 45 Old Master paintings by artists including Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds from the walls of the Palladian mansion and replaced them with what he has called his "Colour Space" paintings.
They are a new body of work based on the Spot Paintings which made his name in the 1980s - and are among his most recognised works.
6 comments:
So much modern "art" is merely an interesting juxtaposition. Something industrial and brutal is carefully placed among rococo flounces, or something dirty and organic is parked among some clean lines, or you find a setting that is grave and mysterious and a childish piece of frippery is left there. To be fair, some of it can be mildly interesting, in that it is enough to hold the attention for a few seconds: "Blimey, look at that!" "I say, whatever next!". As Johnson said, "Worth seeing, but not worth going to see".
Hirst's latest effort doesn't even measure up to those standards. I guess it's a sign of our fluid post-modern times that Hirst might either be a cunning greedy mountebank, or a deluded simpleton with zero self-awareness. Or both. Or neither. Even asking the question seems to reveal how out of touch one is...
I really don't think that in Hirst's case he should have mentioned a skip..............
I think I'll stay well away from Norfolk on this one...
He'll fit right in with the brighter lights of rural Norfolk.
Going round historical and stately homes now has the generation problem. Us oldies cannot get up the stairs, the young ones are not interested, the ones in the middle are too much in debt to have days out of this kind. So now they have to put on other things to get the punters in to meet the bills, and they are big bills.
Sam - I'll go for both. Do we mind being out of touch though? Perhaps not.
Wiggia - my thought too, although maybe he was stirring it.
Scrobs - it would certainly put me off.
DCB - I don't know - does anyone genuinely like his stuff?
Demetrius - we've noticed that too. In many cases they risk annoying the oldies but maybe that is a risk they are happy to take.
Post a Comment